


non frustra vixi

by Aramley, meretricula



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Sports, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:50:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9021568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: In 2008, the previously all-women St. Hilda's College at Oxford began admitting men. In 2009, classics afficionado, rowing prodigy, and all-around posh bastard Alexander Macedon decided his new ambition was to join his best friend at Hilda's and start a men's rowing dynasty.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, fawatson! We hope you'll enjoy this fic as much as we enjoyed writing it.

_Kathleen Major Library, St. Hilda's College, Oxford  
Eighth week of Michaelmas Term, 2008_

"Hephaistion, if your phone doesn't stop ringing in the next five seconds I am going to smash it beneath that sad sack's medical dictionary," Roxane said, gesturing with her chin towards the wretched huddle of sweatshirt-swaddled limbs asleep at the other end of the table. "And then I will throw the fragments in the Isis. And then your boyfriend will send his bodyguards round to throw me in prison and you will fail your collections at the start of Hilary because I won't be here to help you revise." 

"Please stop calling him my boyfriend," Hephaistion said, long-suffering, and dug his phone out of his bag before Britney Spears could finish warning him that all forms of dissimulation were useless, since she knew exactly what kind of man he was. He was never letting Alexander pick his own ringtone again. 

"Why didn't you answer your phone when I called earlier?" Alexander demanded. "Where are you? Who are you with? Why didn't you tell me about it ahead of time?" 

"I'm writing an essay. The library. Roxane. I did tell you I have an essay due before end of term," Hephaistion said. He had learned it was easier to just tell Alexander whatever he wanted to know than try to protect any faint lingering sense of privacy. Four years together at Eton hadn't left many secrets to be exposed anyway. 

"Oh, that's right, you did," Alexander agreed, immediately pacified. "Sorry to interrupt you. Anyway, I have great news!" 

Hephaistion tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear and went back to typing. "Mm?" he asked vaguely. 

"Hilda's admitted me to read for classics!" 

"Like you expect me to be surprised," Hephaistion scoffed, then replayed what Alexander had just said. "Wait. You were admitted at _St. Hilda's_? You interviewed at Oriel! Your dad went to Oriel! You're going to _row_ for Oriel!" 

"I told the interviewer at Oriel I wanted to go to Hilda's," Alexander said. "It was just a second interview. He was a bit weird about it, actually, kept going on as if there was a mistake with my application because I only listed the one college. But I got him to listen eventually. Anyway, I'm going to row for Hilda's instead. You can row with me again! It'll be fun!" 

"Alexander," said Hephaistion, unable to work out how to begin to convey to Alexander how incredibly unfun things were about to become. He settled for, "Hilda's doesn't even have a men's rowing team!"

"Yet," said Alexander, sounding smug. "St. Hilda's doesn't have a rowing team _yet_."

"Oh god," said Hephaistion. He looked at the half-written essay on the screen. It suddenly seemed unimportant, since he was never going to live long enough to finish it. "Does your father know?"

"Obviously Phillip doesn't know yet," said Alexander. "You know I tell you everything first. I've always told you everything first."

Hephaistion spared a moment to enjoy the helpless warm feeling this gave him behind his ribs, which he always got when Alexander expressed such casual devotion. He hoped it would comfort him on the long cold nights ahead after Phillip had him put in prison. 

"Your father is going to go insane," said Hephaistion. "It's going to be worse than the time at school with the —"

"I know," said Alexander, gleefully. 

Roxane had abandoned her own essay to watch the breakdown that Hephaistion was, apparently, visibly having. She flipped her notebook to a clean page and drew a giant question mark on it and tilted it up. Hephaistion shook his head helplessly and she clarified by scribbling beneath it in all-capital letters. THERE IS NO WAY, she underlined three times, YOUR WEIRDO INBRED BOYFRIEND GOT REJECTED FROM ORIEL. 

Hephaistion grabbed her pen and notebook away and, as Alexander continued to explicate his grand plan to give his father an aneurysm by creating a new dynasty of rowing glory at St. Hilda's, attempted to confront the only part of the situation he felt qualified to handle. "Stop calling him my boyfriend," he hissed. 

"Who are you talking to? Is that Roxane? Tell her this instant that I am so your boyfriend and she's to refer to me as such at every opportunity. Stop denying our love, Hephaistion, I find it very hurtful." 

"Alexander, I'm in the library," Hephaistion said wearily. "I really have to get off the phone. I'll call you tomorrow morning after the tute, all right? I'm proud of you for getting in," he added, because despite everything else he was, and then, reflexively, "okay, love you, bye." 

"Okay, love you, bye," Roxane repeated mockingly. 

"Don't," Hephaistion pleaded. "I'm in a very delicate emotional state. He told the bloody interviewer at Oriel's to fuck off because he wanted to go to Hilda's. He's dead set on starting a men's team _here_." 

"I'm very sorry that the Secretary for Defense is about to have you murdered," Roxane said. "Are you almost done with your essay? We can go down the buttery and get a pint to toast your impending doom." 

"No," he said grimly. "Get your coat. We're going to the kebab van by Magdalen. I need some fucking chips." 

-

_Wolfson Building, St. Hilda's College, Oxford  
First week of Michaelmas term, 2009_

Ptolemy dumped the last box on his desk and looked around. The room was not exactly as he had imagined it: the walls were white and bare save for a pockmarked pinboard above the desk, the single bed looked like it would struggle to accommodate his six-three, rugby-playing frame, and above anything else it was at St. Hilda's. This was not where Ptolemy had envisioned his Oxford career playing out. 

He had barely begun to wallow in feeling sorry for himself when someone knocked the door and opened it at the same time. A boy, extravagantly blond, walked in. 

"Come in," said Ptolemy dryly. 

"Thanks," said the boy. He looked Ptolemy up and down. "Do you row?"

"What," said Ptolemy. 

"I'm putting together a rowing crew," said the boy. "You'd be perfect, look at you. Have you rowed before?"

Ptolemy had been at St. Hilda's for all of thirty minutes.

"Sorry," he said, "Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Alexander," said the boy. He held out his hand and Ptolemy shook it. 

"Ptolemy," he said. "And no, I've never rowed before. I played rugby. I was supposed to play rugby here but I don't think Hilda's has a team. A men's team, I mean."

"Well, that's all right," said Alexander cheerfully. "Rowing's better than rugby by a mile anyway. You'll catch on quick. Give me your mobile, I'll put my number in and I'll text you when I have practice time set up." 

"Wait, that isn't -- I never said -- " Ptolemy protested, and then, when Alexander returned his phone open to the new page in his contacts, "Bloody hell, you're Alexander _Macedon_?" 

"In the flesh!" Alexander beamed, and Ptolemy, hitherto a staunch heterosexual, felt an uneasy twinge of something that might have been irritation and might have been sexual attraction. "My room's across the hall. My best mate's living out down Cowley Road, though, so I expect I won't be here much. Guess you'll see me plenty in rowing practice! Oh, what are you reading, though? Maybe we'll share a tute." 

"Geography," Ptolemy said cautiously. He had no intention of rowing for St. Hilda's, or indeed anywhere. He was beginning to suspect that he no longer had any choice in the matter. 

"Oh," said Alexander, his face scrunching up briefly as though he had tasted something foul. "Well, that's all right," he added generously. "If that's your thing. I'm reading classics." 

"Sounds like it suits you," Ptolemy said.

Alexander's face brightened again. "It does."

"Alright," said Ptolemy. He looked at his phone again, with Alexander Macedon's name in it. "Hang on, you haven't got my mobile number."

"That's alright," said Alexander, with another one of those bright, confusing smiles and an easy air of absolute self confidence. "I'll save it when you call me."

The hell of it was, Ptolemy already knew that he would.

-

_Brasenose College, Oxford  
Fourth week of Hilary term, 2010_

Stateira blew out a long breath as she and Alexander escaped onto the quad after their joint tute. She had had to read out her essay, which was always terrifying; this time the topic of her essay had prompted a long discussion of which she felt she had grasped about half. Frogs and frog ponds had come into it somewhere.

"That was great," Alexander said, true to form. Alexander never seemed lost even in the most abstract of debates, and she wanted to hate him for it but could never quite get there. She punched him in his unfairly muscled shoulder instead, which just made him laugh.

"That was exhausting," she said, as they came out onto Radcliffe Square. "I need caffeine. No, I need sugar. G&D's?" It was early in the term and still a little cold for ice cream, but seriously, that tute.

"Can't," said Alexander, tossing his blond head. "I've arranged training today."

"You and your bloody rowing," said Stateira. "You're worse than my sister. I thought I'd finally escaped when I left home." 

"Come down to the river," said Alexander. "Hephaistion still won't get in the boat so you can keep him company."

After their first tute together Alexander had asked her to come to get a coffee with him and his best friend. It hadn't been ten seconds before she'd worked out that whatever Hephaistion was, best friend was the least of it. "Well, I suppose if I get to sit with _Hephaistion_ , I might," she teased, because there was absolutely nothing under the sun funnier than watching Alexander bristle with jealousy. She'd tried it once on Hephaistion too, more out of curiosity than anything else, but for all that he could charm the literal birds out of the trees, they both knew Alexander would never give Hephaistion anything to worry about. 

"Oi, Macedon!" came a shout down High Street, interrupting Alexander's indignant and somewhat incoherent protests. "Off to practice?" 

" _Ugh_ ," said Stateira, not quite quietly enough. 

"Where else?" Alexander shouted back, then looked down at Stateira with a concerned expression. "What's wrong?" 

"Tell you later," she muttered, and then Cassander bloody Antipater, lad among lads, descended upon them. 

"Fresh from tute?" Cassander asked. He draped an arm over Alexander's shoulders, and was angling toward Stateira as if he was planning to do the same to her when she ducked back for a moment and caught up again on Alexander's other side. "And looking spritely as new-grown daisies, too. Spare a thought for us economists doing real work while you're faffing about with dead languages, would you?" 

"Poor you," said Stateira. "Sure you'll be able to row after all that strain?"

Cassander leaned around Alexander and gave her one of the smiles that he clearly believed were ingratiating. "Oh, I come from tough stock, darling." 

"'Tough stock,'" she repeated to Hephaistion fifteen minutes later while they watched Alexander chase the rest of his motley crew down to their boat. "If that's what we're calling inbred congenital twits these days. I don't know why Alexander puts up with him." 

"Cassander's father works with Alexander's father, skiing in Vail, beach trips to Cannes, stop me if you've heard this one before. Anyway, if being a dickhead disqualified you from rowing at Oxford," Hephaistion said dryly, "they wouldn't have enough men to crew a single boat on the Isis." 

"His problem has nothing to do with rowing," Stateira said. "There's three kinds of men at Hilda's. The few, present company included, who actually give a shit about gender equality and integrating the women's colleges. The positive discrimination admits who couldn't get into their first choice college and got lucky because Hilda's had a quota of men to fill -- they're not even all bad, Ptolemy's quite tolerable now he's dating that PhD student, but you know what I mean. And then there's the fucking lads like _Cassie_ down there, who thought going to a women's college would make it easier to pick up." 

Hephaistion tilted his head to the side in consideration. "Largely accurate, I suppose. What kind is Alexander, though?"

Stateira rolled her eyes. "Oh, come off it. It's not like Alexander gives a shit about Hilda's one way or the other. He cares about three things: rowing, Homer, and you. If you lived up there and they had rivers, he'd be happy reading classics on the moon. Are you _blushing_ , you giant girl's blouse?" she demanded. 

"You clearly have some internalized misogyny to work out," Hephaistion said primly, still very red in the cheeks. 

"You clearly have a lot of other things to work out," she retorted, "but because I am a spectacular human being — don't you _snort_ at me, Amyntor, you should be so lucky as to meet anyone as nice as me — I will allow you to ignore them in favor of ogling your boyfriend in peace." 

"Thank you, I shall," Hephaistion said. He and Stateira sat in pious silence for almost a whole minute, watching Alexander's face go progressively redder as the rest of the rowers in the boat failed miserably to live up to any of his expectations. "They're going to get bumped in about thirty seconds at Torpids, though." 

"Oh, beyond a shadow of a doubt," Stateira agreed. "I hope you're prepared to comfort Alexander sexually." 

Hephaistion flashed her a sudden, dazzling smile, and even _knowing_ that it was payback for teasing earlier, Stateira felt her heart start to race. Sometimes it was easy to see why Alexander was so mad about him. "Only always," he said, and got to his feet. "Hey, you worthless pack of wankers!" he shouted. "Do you need me to come down there and show you how it's done?"

*

_Baby Love Bar, Oxford  
Second week of Michaelmas term, 2009_

When Bagoas had pictured his amazingly liberated college lifestyle, in which he was finally able to enjoy all the glitter and sexually available rugby players he wanted, he had somehow never factored in the fact that Oxford, bastion of tweed jackets and twelfth century architecture, didn't have a gay bar. No, Oxford just had Poptarts on Tuesday nights at Baby Love, and what looked like every single boy in eyeliner in a ten-mile radius was in the queue with him. Bagoas wasn't a believer in false modesty — he owned a mirror; he knew he looked good — but the odds were decidedly not in his favor. 

It was at this psychologically low moment that he first caught sight of the single most beautiful boy he had ever seen. He was tall and blond and had _amazing_ shoulders, and he was was wearing neither glitter not eyeliner. In fact, if it hadn't been for the Britney Spears Circus Tour tee-shirt he was wearing, Bagoas would have assumed he had wandered down the wrong street and wound up in the queue for Poptarts by mistake. 

Bagoas weighed the virtues of allowing the group of girls behind him to queue-jump in return for getting a bit closer to the blond boy versus his likelihood of freezing to death. It was a cool October and his outfit had not been chosen for warmth. He chanced another look at the boy's beautiful clear profile and heavy blond curls, reminded himself that he had not worked his tiny arse off to come to Oxford and be a wallflower and decided it was a fair trade, especially when one of the girls swirled her pashmina around his shoulders in gratitude.

Now there was only one person between them: a taller but similarly-broad-shouldered, dark-haired boy with his back to Bagoas and his head tipped back, breathing out a plume of cigarette smoke to the sky.

"Please stop making sad eyes at me," the boy said, when he'd finished exhaling. "I've been looking forward to this cigarette for a week."

The gorgeous blond boy, to whom this had been directed, tipped his head to one side with an attitude of deep suffering. "I just don't know why you'd take risks like that."

The other boy laughed. "It's a cigarette, Alexander, not a hand grenade."

"Yes, a _cigarette_."

"I've just had my collections and this _is_ the only one I've had all term."

"Term's not even a fortnight old," said the blond boy, Alexander. "And if you die before me, I'm not going to just bury you and move on, all right, I'm going to go full Achilles in Iliad 19 and lie weeping on your corpse until it starts to rot, so — Hephaistion, look."

The taller boy, Hephaistion, turned around quickly and Bagoas went rigid with the fear of the eavesdropper caught in the act. 

"He's perfect," said Alexander, looking directly at him. Bagoas felt distantly that this should be the crowning moment of his life, only being the subject of Alexander's attention was a bit like being caught in the track of a searchlight. Bagoas fought the inclination to hide under his borrowed pashmina.

"How tall are you?" Alexander demanded. "What do you weigh? You're _so_ tiny."

"Alexander," said Hephaistion, with a long-suffering sigh. He looked at Bagoas. "You're at Hilda's, aren't you? I think I saw you with the freshers, but you were less glittery then."

"Um," said Bagoas. "I mean, yes."

"I apologize in advance for this one," Hephaistion said, jerking his chin in Alexander's direction. "Raised by wolves with a rabid obsession for rowing, no social graces whatsoever." 

"I have plenty of social graces," Alexander said absent-mindedly. He was still staring so intently that Bagoas almost wished for a lead bib like they used at the dentist's when he got x-rayed to check for cavities: he thought his internal organs might need the protection. It didn't even feel sexual, just terrifying. "What's your name, tiny fresher? Are you signed up for extracurriculars yet? It's all right if you are, I'll explain you have more important commitments now." 

" _Alexander,_ " interrupted Hephaistion, before Bagoas found himself agreeing helplessly that sexually servicing Alexander in whatever way he wanted, no matter how degrading, was certainly more important than the genderswapped production of Twelfth Night he had been planning on auditioning for, and in fact now that he'd found his vocation in life he was ready to begin whenever Alexander found it convenient. "You cannot recruit a new cox in the queue for fucking Baby Love." 

"Opportunity can knock at any moment," said Alexander, haughtily. "You don't just turn away because it appears to you in the queue for Baby Love wearing body glitter."

"Excuse me," Bagoas said. He was fairly certain by now that the term cox had nothing to do with sexual positions, which was possibly a relief as much as it was a disappointment. "What are you talking about?" 

"Rowing, obviously," Alexander said. "You're at Hilda's, and a boy, and our cox is absolute rubbish, we got destroyed last year in Summer Eights, _and_ he got fat over summer hols so now he'll be even worse. You're exactly what I've been looking for." 

Somehow, even coming out of the mouth of the most beautiful boy in Oxford, this was less than romantic. "You want me to join your rowing team," Bagoas clarified. "Me. You want me to perform physical exercise, competitively." 

"No, no, no," Alexander said reassuringly. "We just want you to _cox_ for us. No rowing involved." 

"Lots of getting up at ungodly hours and sitting in a boat while other people row, though," Hephaistion added. "Yelling at them, trying to break their spirits, that sort of thing. And you have to put up with Alexander being an absolute lunatic who has still not _let the tiny fresher introduce himself._ " 

"My — my name is Bagoas?" 

"Pleasure to meet you, Bagoas!" Alexander beamed. They'd finally reached the head of the queue, somewhat to Bagoas's surprise — he hadn't even noticed that they were moving — and made their way to the bar, the crowd parting in front of Alexander like the Red Sea. "Come along, my cox drinks free." 

"If you want me to distract him so you can escape, just say the word," Hephaistion whisper-shouted in his ear over the pounding bass in the club. "I know he's kind of overwhelming." 

"I'm not overwhelmed!" Bagoas snapped back indignantly. "What, he can't even talk to other people? Are you jealous?" 

If that arrow had landed anywhere, Bagoas couldn't tell from Hephaistion's face. "Your funeral, tiny fresher," he said, smiling, and then Alexander was back with two shots and a pint. The beer was apparently for Hephaistion; Alexander gave one of the shotglasses to Bagoas and kept the other for himself. 

"All right," Alexander said. "Repeat after me, Bagoas: oars across." 

"Oars across," Bagoas said obediently, and knocked back his drink. It was vodka, smoother than he was used to, which either meant that Alexander had ordered top shelf or the bartender had liked the looks of him enough to upgrade his drink. The sudden rush of heat gave him the courage to try a pout. "Come on, you can teach me something else after we dance. _And_ buy me another drink." 

Alexander, when he looked up at him through his eyelashes, looked surprised; Hephaistion was laughing. "You know, you're all right for a fresher," he said. "No, you two go on, I'll find you when I finish my drink. Next round's on me!" 

In the triumph of getting to dance with Alexander _and_ separate him from the annoyingly complacent Hephaistion _and_ have drinks bought for him all night in full view of every tight-trousered, eyeliner-wearing boy in Baby Love, Bagoas had possibly overestimated his own alcohol tolerance, which explained why he woke up the next morning on a strange couch with a splitting headache and hazy memories of trying to pole dance. Fucking Baby Love, why did they even _have_ that pole on the dance floor. "Where am I?" he moaned. 

"Cowley," came an unsympathetic female voice from the next room. "D'you want some tea? Himself is going to come down the stairs in about ten minutes to drag you to practice, so you might as well." 

"Practice?" Bagoas repeated pathetically. 

There was a series of thumping noises that made Bagoas want to clutch at his head, and then there was a body in front of him, mercifully blocking out the light. "I did warn you," Hephaistion said. "Take the paracetamol. You're going to need it, Alexander's almost out of the shower. Roxane, my queen, light of my life — "

"Your tea is on the counter." The woman — Roxane — emerged from the kitchen with a mug in each hand. "Here, sparkly fetus. Next time don't try to keep up with Macedon, he has a mutant liver." 

Bagoas took the tea and painkillers without question: any port in a storm, and all that. Still — "What do you mean, practice?" 

More thumps from what Bagoas assumed was the vicinity of the stairs presaged the arrival of Alexander, still damp and glowing and far too attractive for any hour of the morning, let alone pre-dawn. "Oh, excellent, you're awake already. Here, see if these fit. We'll get you a proper uniform later today." 

"Alexander, is that my gym outfit?" Roxane asked, with a note of danger in her voice that even Bagoas heard through his hangover. 

"Well, he wouldn't fit in any of my clothes," Alexander pointed out. "And Hephaistion's even taller. I'll buy you a new one. Is there tea?" 

"You know, one of these days, I'm going to murder you in your sleep," Roxane said sweetly. "It'll be a terrible tragedy. Hephaistion will be just absolutely broken by losing you, won't you, darling?" 

"Devastated," Hephaistion called from the kitchen. 

"He'll be so wounded, so vulnerable. So susceptible to my comforting embrace — "

"Keep your fucking hands off Hephaistion in his hypothetical time of emotional distress, you harpy!" Alexander snapped, and both Roxane and Hephaistion dissolved into laughter. 

"If the idea upsets you so much, I guess you'd better stop giving me reasons to kill you, Macedon. Good luck at practice, fetus. I'm sure I'll see you again soon." 

"I don't know why you're friends with that woman," Alexander said, once Roxane was safely out of the room. "She's a monster." 

"So are you," Hephaistion said. He came back into the living room with a mug of tea for himself and another that he handed to Alexander. "If we're stating the obvious. You'd better hurry and get changed, Bagoas, or we'll all be late for practice." 

Bagoas started to protest, then wilted under the force of Alexander's beaming smile and shuffled off to the bathroom to change into Roxane's tracksuit. He could always quit after the first practice, he told himself. It wasn't like he knew anything about rowing or coxing or posh blond boys who kidnapped people out of the Baby Love queue and then didn't even have the decency to have sex with them. He'd be pants at it, even worse than the fat rubbish idiot he was meant to replace, and Alexander would see that and let him go back to his perfectly ordinary life of class and amateur theater and sleeping in past dawn after a night on the lash. 

"Oars across," he mumbled to himself, "settle, way-enough." Most of the terms Alexander had tried to teach him last night between shots were coming back to him. He'd get Hephaistion to explain what they meant on the way to practice. He hadn't even met Hilda's ex-cox, but Bagoas wasn't going to fucking _lose_ to him. 

*

_Jamal's, Oxford  
Fifth week of Hilary Term, 2010_

"You have to let me come," Darius had said, when the Magdalen Women's First Eight made their crew date with the St Hilda's Men's, who didn't get to call themselves a first eight because they were the _only_ eight. St. Hilda's, for obvious reasons, did not have much of a history of men's rowing. 

"What would be the point?" said Drypetis. "It's the men's crew, not the women's; anyway, we're going to Jamal's, and you hate Jamal's."

"Nobody goes on a crew date for the cuisine, for starters," said Darius, which Drypetis conceded was a fair point. "And putting aside for a second the innately hilarious prospect of a St Hilda's men's boat club, I'm going to be captain for Summer Eights and they're getting annoyingly decent at rowing."

She'd asked him if he intended to wage some kind of psychological warfare on the Hilda's team, and he'd just laughed in that annoyingly charming way of his. She'd meant it half in jest then, but on the night of the crew date Darius made sure to seat himself directly opposite Alexander Macedon and the naan bread had barely touched the table when the competitive pennying began.

Drypetis was sat between Cassander and Ptolemy; Ptolemy was sweet enough in his own way but kept breaking off the conversation to text his girlfriend, and ignoring Cassander — the only possible reaction to him, aside from murder — left Drypetis to pick at her tikka masala and peek through the two dozen bottles of Barefoot pino grig littering the table at the unfolding psychodrama. Stateira always enjoyed relating the saga of Alexander to her like the synopsis of a complicated tv show, so it was nice to be able to tune in herself.

"Don't expect me to carry you home when you get alcohol poisoning," she heard Hephaistion say, managing to sound annoyed and fond at the same time. God, suddenly she understood what her sister had been going on about for the last eighteen months. 

"Macedons don't get alcohol poisoning," Alexander said, and then interrupted himself with a triumphant yip, which Drypetis assumed meant he had once again landed a penny in Darius's glass. 

"Not for the want of trying," said Hephaistion. There was another little clink and Hephaistion shouted, "Oi! Leave me out of it."

"Oh, sorry," said Darius, sounding not the least little bit. "My aim must be getting off. Never mind. They say you two are practically interchangeable anyway."

At the far end of the table Barsine, the women's captain, had also been keeping an eye on the proceedings and apparently decided that group drunkenness was preferable to the Alexander-Darius death match and initiated a round of sconcing. They'd already sconced anyone who'd vommed in a college not their own and anyone who'd made an inappropriate sexual remark within the last two minutes (a shot at Cassander which also took in a swathe of the Hilda's boys and an embarrassing number of the Magdalen girls in a spray of friendly fire).

Drypetis decided to put a year of listening to Stateira's stories about Alexander to good use and raised her glass. "I sconce anyone whose first sexual experience is _currently in this room_."

There was general cheering and banging of tables and, as she'd known he would, Alexander raised his glass. He looped his arm around Hephaistion's neck and beamed down the length of the table.

"Cheers!" he said. He raised his glass to all assembled and downed it in a long, theatrical swallow. Hephaistion finished his drink too, trying not to spill any while being jostled with merciless affection by Alexander and looking somewhere between secretly pleased and wishing fervently that the ground would open up and swallow him. She hadn't been sure, but that figured. From what Stateira had told her Alexander would certainly have hunted down and destroyed anyone who had dared touch Hephaistion before he did. The schoolboy sweethearts: it was disgusting.

What she hadn't expected was the second round of cheers and wolf-whistles emanating from the other side of the table. She leaned around Ptolemy to look for the source and found it: Darius was also drinking. 

"WHO?" she shrieked.

Darius winked across the table and, following the line of the wink, she came to Hilda's tiny cox on Alexander's left, who had blushed about the colour of the peppers in his lamb jalfrezi and had his wine in a white-knuckled grip. 

"We were at Charterhouse together," said Darius. "Weren't we, Bagoas?"

Flushed and brilliant, with Hephaistion still clutched to his right (and not struggling to free himself, Drypetis noticed) Alexander put his free arm around Bagoas' shoulders and shouted, "Come on, Bagoas, drink up! Alright he's a wanker, but he's good-looking at least."

Bagoas drank his wine, looking a little dejected. Drypetis almost pitied him, but since the only way the universe could be more obvious about his chances of prying Alexander off Hephaistion, with or without a crowbar, would be if a choir of angels descended while singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want," she figured it was probably the sort of object lesson freshers were meant to learn at uni. And frankly, if he'd bagged _Darius_ , who if the Facebook photo trail was to be believed had been the only boy in English history to sail through secondary school without so much as a single spot or an embarrassing emo phase, tiny Hilda cox was doing pretty well for himself. 

Tiny Hilda cox did not currently look like he thought he was doing well for himself, especially as Darius had gone full wanker and launched into a bit of a monologue about the halcyon days of their youthful indiscretions ("Remember, Bagoas, that time in the library? After the cricket match? Come off it, I'm sure _I_ 'll never forget it) and Hephaistion had leaned around Alexander to put a hand on his shoulder. Bagoas shrugged it off casually under the guise of reaching for another bottle of wine. 

"I sconce all you posh wankers whose daddies are paying your tuition," Hephaistion said, pointedly interrupting Darius's soliloquy, and sat back with his arms crossed while everyone but Bagoas, Drypetis, and Magdalen's cox drained their glasses. Drypetis caught his eye and nodded, raising her water glass in a silent toast.

In the quiet that lingered as everyone cast around for a bottle that still had wine in it, the clink of a penny landing in Darius's glass was audible all the way down the table. "I swear to _Christ_ , Alexander," Hephaistion snarled, whipping around again. 

"That was me, actually," said Bagoas.

"Oh, sorry." Hephaistion didn't try to touch Bagoas again, but he sounded almost proud. Absolute mental patients, the lot of them: Drypetis was already excited to relate the whole story to her sister. "In that case, carry on. Aren't you going to drink, Darius?" 

*

_St. Hilda's College, Oxford  
Fifth week of Trinity term, 2010_

"HEAD OF THE RIVER!" Alexander bellowed, to a ragged series of cheers and whistles. The quad at St. Hilda's had probably never been subjected to this sort of scene before, Hephaistion reflected ruefully, but the residents seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. He didn't even think anyone was drunk yet. "Your champions, ladies and gentlemen! Prepare to chalk the blades on the wall and set fire to the boat! THE SAINT HILDA'S FIRST EIGHT!" 

"He actually did it," Ptolemy said beside him, more to himself than to Hephaistion. "I can't believe he actually did it." 

"He's a pretty unbelievable person," Hephaistion agreed. "But you had a lot to do with it too, you know." 

Ptolemy shrugged. "We all did our part, sure. Even Bagoas, much to his dismay. But we all know whose prize it is." 

"Are you glad you wound up at Hilda's, then?"

"Rugby's still better than rowing by a mile and you're all mental for not acknowledging that," Ptolemy said. "And I've had to put up with Cassander Antipater for two straight years, which the universe definitely owes me for. But yeah. Yeah, I guess I am." 

"Enough serious conversation!" Alexander had snuck up between them and draped an arm around both of their shoulders. "We're the head of the river and we drink from the keg of victory tonight!" 

Hephaistion liberated the bottle Alexander was swinging around before he hit anyone with it and took a cautious sip. "The keg of victory tastes like bottom-shelf tequila for some reason." 

"Well, I don't want you to drink too much of it," Alexander said cheerfully. "As soon as we're done with the boat bonfire and the speeches we're going home so you can nail me through the floor." 

" _Alexander_ ," Hephaistion warned, overlapping with Ptolemy's, "Didn't need to know that, thanks!" 

"You're both boring. Come on, let's go set things on fire!" 

Supervising _that_ mess, plus keeping an eye on Bagoas, whose on-again off-again relationship with Darius appeared to be self-destructing via text under the weight of Hilda's victory in the boatrace, kept Hephaistion too busy to even think about what Alexander had meant about speeches. He regretted that almost as soon as Alexander climbed up on a bench and opened his mouth. 

"You guys — you guys, I am _so proud_ of you. You all fought like fucking _beasts_ out on the river, but more importantly than that, you trained like beasts all year with me and Bagoas on your backs. Bagoas, you are the tiniest and meanest cox I've ever met, and you're definitely the best thing I've ever found in the queue at Baby Love. Ptolemy, you're too good for rugby, all right? Accept it. You're a rower now. Cassander, you are a fucking wanker, but when push comes to shove, you're a fucking legend. Seleucus, Perdiccas, I've never been prouder to have a man at my back. I trust you two like my own brothers. Lysimachus, you can tell your old man to suck it, because you were right to follow me to Hilda's. Demetrius, I swear I'll never call you kid again. You're a man today. And Hephaistion — well, there's nothing you haven't heard me say before. You're the light of my fucking life. μὴ μὰν ἀσπουδί γε καὶ ἀκλειῶς ἀπολοίμην, ἀλλὰ μέγα ῥέξας τι καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι. I guarantee you, you've all done enough today to be remembered forever." Hephaistion, who had tuned out of enough rambling monologues about Homer to guess the source of the gibberish Alexander was spouting, ignored all of his teammates mouthing _what the fuck_ and looked for Stateira. She was mouthing _what the fuck_ too, but her expression was more disgusted than confused, so it was probably just something grossly sentimental, in an ancient Greek kind of way. "I'm going to — fuck, I'm going to cry. I'm going to miss you all so much next year. Kick everybody's asses for me." 

"Wait," Bagoas said as Alexander jumped down and tucked himself under the arm Hephaistion had stretched out for him, entirely unconsciously. "Wait, Alexander. Why would you miss us next year? Won't you still be rowing with us?" 

Alexander didn't even tense up; it was like he didn't see why anyone would think it was important at all. "Well, I got recruited to row for the Blues — I mean, they tried to recruit me last year, but I wanted to stay and get us to Head of the River. But we won! And Hephaistion's finished this year anyway so he won't be rowing at Hilda's, and they still want me to row for Oxford, so…" 

"You absolute fuckhead," Ptolemy said into the silence that followed. Bagoas looked like he was about to cry. "You couldn't have mentioned this _a little sooner_?" 

"I didn't know for sure we'd win until now!" Alexander said indignantly. "And anyway, you knew Hephaistion was graduating. I thought it was pretty obvious." 

_Homer, rowing, and me,_ Hephaistion thought, catching Stateira's eye. It was one of life's greatest mysteries how Alexander could be so charismatic and so selfish at the same time. It was an even greater mystery why it sometimes made Hephaistion feel so warm inside to know that Alexander's glorious selfishness would always encompass him as well. 

"Wait," Cassander said. "Who's going to be captain now?" 

"I don't know, you'll vote on it, I guess? Guys, there's plenty of time to worry about that later. Enjoy the party!" And with that, Alexander grabbed Hephaistion's hand and fucking _left_ , like he hadn't just exploded a bomb that was about to destroy their entire social circle. Hephaistion could already see Cassander and Ptolemy glaring at each other out of the corner of his eye as Alexander dragged him away. 

"You don't think you should have mentioned the possibility that you might be leaving the team before?" Hephaistion asked. 

"What?" Alexander looked back at him, honestly surprised. "Hephaistion, they'll be _fine_. They won Summer Eights! They've got plenty of time to replace me." 

"I'm not sure you're replaceable," Hephaistion said. 

Alexander stopped dead in the street and pushed Hephaistion up against the wall to kiss him breathless. "Sweet talker," he said between kisses. "Take me home and show me how irreplaceable I really am." 

This was the thing about Alexander: Hephaistion was, objectively, angrier with him than he'd been in years, and hurt that he'd never asked what Hephaistion thought about him quitting crew at St. Hilda's, and still so in love with him that his teeth ached sometimes when he looked at him. He didn't have rowing or Greek the way Alexander did. For Hephaistion, it was Alexander and Alexander and Alexander all the way down, ever since that day at Eton when Phillip Macedon's son had made friends with the scruffy scholarship kid, and it would be Alexander and Alexander and Alexander until the day he died. There were so many other people in their lives now, but Alexander was the only truly irreplaceable thing. 

"Thank you for the invitation," Hephaistion said gravely. He paused for another kiss, longer and sweeter this time, his hands buried in Alexander's hair where they belonged. "I do believe I will."

**Author's Note:**

> Neither of us is a rower, but we're both Oxford grads! About 99% of the details of Oxford life are true -- crew dates, posh wankers, and the pole on the dance floor of Baby Love included. The remaining 1% is probably a detail about rowing. Sorry to any rowers if we got something wrong! 
> 
> Translations:  
> -non frustra vixi is the motto of St. Hilda's College and is Latin for "I have not lived in vain" which is such an Alexander quote, we had to stick him at Hilda's!  
> -the line Alexander quotes in Greek during his victory speech is from the _Iliad_ ; it's from Hector's death scene. It means "Let me not die without effort and without glory, but rather having done something great for future generations to learn about" and is _also_ such an Alexander quote. What a nerd.


End file.
